HISTORIA DE LA CULTURA Y CIVILIZACIÓN INGLESA II
NAHUEL ASIS
UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE LA RIOJA
CONTENT
1.
S
Government and politics 4. Gender and Class
2. Victorian British economy 5. Religion and Science
3. Victorian British Empire 6. Victorian culture and art
Government and politics
Government and politics
Constitutional monarchy. dominated by aristocratic men * the two houses of Parliament:
The British constitution: * unwritten The House of Commons:
* written laws and unwritten conventions 600 men called members of
Parliament (MPs)
Government: two-fold: * the monarch
Most prominent monarchs: Queen Victoria (1837–1901) The House of Lords:
populated by hundreds of
preceded by and King William IV (1830–37)
noblemen who possessed life
King George IV (1820–30) tenures.
Formal national politics
Liberal Party and the Conservative Party
Liberals: continuation of the Whig Party
1868-1894 William E. Gladstone
• Gladstone’s reforms: education, secret ballot, legalization of trade unions, enfranchisement of the working class in
rural areas, reconstruction of the army, judicial system.
Conservatives: continuation of the Tory Party
Private property and enterprise, strong military, traditional cultural values and institutions.
1834–1846 Robert Peel
• One of the Founders of this party
• Tamworth Manifesto: presented the principles upon which the modern British Conservative Party is based.
• He proposed reforms.
Important political events
1. Broadening the franchise: the Reform Bills
• First Reform Bill of 1832: voting privileges from the nobility and gentry to populated industrial towns.
• The Second Reform Act of 1867: working-class men in the towns and cities. Tory Benjamin Disraeli. 938,000.
• The Third Reform Act of 1884–85: agricultural workers.
• Redistribution Act of 1885: equalized representation on the basis of 50,000 voters per each legislative constituency.
2. The abolition of slavery: Slavery Abolition Act (1833). More than 800,000 enslaved Africans freed.
3. The repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. Sir Robert Peel.
4. 1833 Factory Act
Victorian British Economy
Victorian British economy
A strong economy between 1820 and 1873.
Afterwards: the Great Depression of 1873–1896.
Financial and manufacturing losses.
recession in the agricultural sector (Glasner and
Cooley, 1997).
1840, “the hungry forties”
People working long hours.
Economic growth and recovery. Second Industrial
Revolution from 1896 until 1914.
Rapid growth of cities.
Expansion of the Middle class: The Bourgeoisie.
Victorian British economy
The Bourgeoisie: skilled jobs to support
themselves and their families.
Merchants and shopkeepers
Trade flourished. domestic and overseas.
new industries: railroads, banks, and
government: more labor needed
Mass production: affordable clothes,
souvenirs, newspapers.
The Victorian British
Gender and Class Empire
The Victorian British Empire
❖ Dominated the globe.
❖ Traffic: constant.
❖ British jobs abroad: civil and military service, missionary work, and infrastructure
development.
Gender and Class
❖ Significant migration to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa.
❖ India became central to imperial status and wealth.
❖ Money: Emigrants sent money home.
❖ Goods: jute, calico cotton-cloth, and tea.
❖ Expansion: new technologies, steamships, railways, telegraphy and telephone.
The Victorian British Empire
❖ Expansion involving violence: Imperialism
❖ The “Scramble for Africa”, 1884-85. invasion, division, and colonization.
❖ Thirteen European countries and the United States: rules of African colonization
(The Berlin Conference of 1884).
Gender and Class
❖ Henry Stanley: Africa full of ivory, rubber, palm oil, cocoa, diamonds, tea, and tin.
❖ Africa, the ‘Dark Continent’.
❖ Branded them uncivilized, ignored the established African tribes.
❖ By 1914, the only independent African states were Liberia and Ethiopia.
Gender and Class
Gender and Class
Victorian stereotype and double standard
Men wanted and needed sex, and women were free of sexual desire.
the reality of a hypocritical society that featured prostitution, venereal disease, women
with sexual desires, and men and women who felt same-sex desire.
Gender and Class
Victorian gender ideology: “doctrine of separate spheres.” Men and women were different
and meant for different things.
MEN WOMEN
sex reproduction
independent dependent
public sphere private sphere
meant to participate in politics and in paid work run households and raise families
distracted by sexual passions morally finer than men
naturally more religious
Gender and Class
Working class: income from wages under £100 About 70 to 80 percent of the
per annum. population
Middle class: income from salaries and profit. from 15 to over 25 percent of the
population
Upper class: income from property, rent, and wealthy, landowners, control of local,
interest national, and imperial politics.
RELIGION AND SCIENCE
Religion and Science
RELIGION AND SCIENCE
• Christian
• State churches: Anglican
Religion and Science
• Religious diversity: non-Anglican Protestants (Methodists), Roman
Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and others (at the end of the period
there were even a few atheists).
RELIGION AND SCIENCE
• Theory of evolution by Charles Darwin.
• Darwin shocked religious Victorian society.
• “On the Origin of Species” (1859)
• Darwin's aim was twofold: species had not been
RELIGION AND SCIENCE
Religion and Science
separately created and natural selection had been the
chief agent of change.
• Emerging discipline of psychology and by the
physics of energy.
VICTORIAN CULTURE AND ART
VICTORIAN CULTURE AND ART
I. Theatre thrived. Melodrama, most popular
genre early on; later, sensation drama
became popular.
II. Music halls emerged in the 1850s.
1870s: hundreds across Britain.
III. Print culture, large and diverse; hundreds of
magazines and newspapers available.
IV. Novels.
Charles Dickens, the Bronte Sisters and
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), among
others.
VICTORIAN CULTURE AND ART
I. Theatre thrived. Melodrama, most popular
genre early on; later, sensation drama
became popular.
II. Music halls emerged in the 1850s.
1870s: hundreds across Britain.
III. Print culture, large and diverse; hundreds of
magazines and newspapers available.
IV. Novels.
Charles Dickens, the Bronte Sisters and
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), among
others.
VICTORIAN CULTURE AND ART
I. Theatre thrived. Melodrama, most popular
genre early on; later, sensation drama
became popular.
II. Music halls emerged in the 1850s.
1870s: hundreds across Britain.
III. Print culture, large and diverse; hundreds of
magazines and newspapers available.
IV. Novels.
Charles Dickens, the Bronte Sisters and
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), among
others.
VICTORIAN CULTURE AND ART
I. Theatre thrived. Melodrama, most popular
genre early on; later, sensation drama
became popular.
II. Music halls emerged in the 1850s.
1870s: hundreds across Britain.
III. Print culture, large and diverse; hundreds of
magazines and newspapers available.
IV. Novels.
Charles Dickens, the Bronte Sisters and
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), among
others.
CONCLUSION
Thank you!
